Note from JB: Seed Round Announcement

Dear Friends of Shilo,

8 months ago, Shilo was a rough sketch: a few lines of code, a few big questions, and a deep conviction that the real estate industry deserved something better.

Real estate agents and loan officers do a lot more than close deals. They’re advisors, connectors, negotiators, and problem-solvers. Yet the tools they rely on are outdated, fragmented, and noisy. AI has promised to change everything, but most of what’s out there is surface-level automation. Helpful, maybe. Not much more.

We started Shilo with a different idea: What if every top-producing agent had an AI partner that actually understood their business, their goals, and their voice, and worked with them, not around them?

Listening First. Then Building.

Before we wrote our first line of production code, we listened. Hundreds of conversations with agents, team leaders, and brokers revealed a pattern: they were overwhelmed by tech stacks, underserved by legacy systems, and burned out by tasks that could be automated (if only the automation actually worked).

Shilo came out of those conversations.

Over the past 8 months, we’ve been heads down, obsessing over the details. We’ve rebuilt workflows that used to take hours into moments. We’ve worked side by side with our early customers to understand not just what they do but why they do it, and designed Shilo to support the moments that matter most.

The feedback has been overwhelming in the best way. Agents telling us we’ve helped them close faster. That they finally feel like something was built for them. That Shilo saved their day, or just made them feel like they had a teammate in their corner.

Those messages keep us grounded. And fired up.

Fuel for What’s Next

Today, I’m proud to share that we’ve raised a $2.6 million seed round, led by AZ-VC. Founded by Jack Selby (Managing Director of Thiel Capital), AZ-VC is Arizona’s largest venture capital fund and a lead investor in early-stage companies building AI for industry-specific workflows.

This funding gives us the ability to:

• Expand our engineering and AI teams so we can move even faster
• Double down on our core mission: building the smartest AI assistant in real estate
• Go deeper with our community, listening more closely than ever and staying focused on solving real problems, not chasing features

But most of all, it gives us time. Time to build with care, serve our early believers, and choose excellence over hype.

Where We’re Headed

We believe that in 5 years, every top-performing real estate professional will have a trusted AI partner by their side. Not one that replaces them, one that amplifies them: an AI that understands their conversations and supports their deals. That partner’s name is Shilo.

That future isn’t far off.
At Shilo, we’re building it now.

So if you’re an agent, a team leader, or an operator in real estate who wants to work smarter, we’re building this for you. And if you’re a builder who wants to help shape AI in one of the most important industries in the world, we’re hiring. We’d love to meet you.

On behalf of the whole Shilo team:
Thank you for believing in the vision.

The best is yet to come.

Onward,

Justin Benson
Co-Founder & CEO, Shilo